Parks Director Accused of Falsifying Records : San Fernando: Police seize documents, allege Jess Margarito prepared papers directing city payment for work not performed.

On nine occasions, city parks director Jess Margarito prepared records directing payment and credit for work that never was performed, according to allegations contained in a request for a search warrant filed by police Tuesday.

San Fernando police Tuesday afternoon, under a warrant signed by Los Angeles County Municipal Judge Maureen Duffy-Lewis, seized a box of records and computer equipment used by Margarito and a subordinate.

Investigators also sought an erased computer tape in the possession of a subcontractor, which they hope to restore and thereby retrieve evidence of Margarito’s actions, according to court papers.

The warrant comes two months after the San Fernando City Council ordered the Police Department to look into possible administrative wrongdoings by Margarito, a former councilman and mayor who in 1990 was appointed to the $62,000-a-year post with the Department of Recreation and Community Services.

The Los Angeles district attorney’s office has been investigating Margarito for possible criminal wrongdoing since April. A spokesman said that the inquiry remains active.

“I’d rather not respond,” Margarito said Tuesday. “I’ll let the process take its course.” In the past, Margarito has assailed the investigation as a racially and politically motivated attempt to destroy his career.

The longtime activist and former census worker cut his political teeth battling Anglo powerbrokers in the 1980s. His career reached a peak in 1986, when the city’s first Latino-majority City Council selected him as mayor. He resigned his seat to take the council-appointed parks post in 1990.

The 82-page document filed Tuesday includes a request to search Margarito’s city offices and an affidavit signed by Lt. Ernest Halcon of the San Fernando Police Department.

The affidavit cites allegations developed in the investigation that Margarito falsified city documents, triggering $2,250 in city funds to be paid for work that was not performed, and that he vouched for work that never was completed by court-referred convicts.

According to the affidavit, Margarito and a group of associates apparently tried to create a personal political fiefdom within San Fernando city government.

“In the apparent quest for political influence and/or control of financial resources . . . criminal acts have been committed. Anyone resisting or refusing to engage in the same type of practices have become the target of allegations charging incompetence, bias, sexual harassment, or racial discrimination,” the document states.

Among the actions police say Margarito either initiated or approved, according to the court papers:

* A $525 payment to the husband of a parks employee for plumbing work that parks workers say was never done. The worker, Kathy Santiago, told The Times that she signed her husband’s name to a blank invoice and understood that the money was actually payment for three months of voluntary work she had completed.

“It was false,” Santiago said of the November, 1992, invoice. “Jess made me sign it. There was nothing on it. When I signed it, it was a blank invoice.”

* Payment of $500 to a volunteer worker who was not on the payroll--a check that investigators say the worker eventually used to pay his rent to his landlord, a former contributor to Margarito’s City Council campaign.

* Submitting a $415 invoice for payment to the half-brother of a parks employee for a carpet-cleaning job that witnesses, including a supervisor, told police never was completed. The alleged cleaning came just two months after another $460 invoice for carpet cleaning that is under scrutiny.

Irregularities surfaced early this year related to the city’s handling of convicts’ work in city parks, assigned as part of their sentences. The agency that assigns court-referred convicts, the Volunteer Center of San Fernando Valley, began questioning time cards from Margarito’s department and suspended activities with San Fernando’s parks department after alerting city officials. What drew their attention were time cards handed in at 1 p.m. for work supposedly completed at 3 p.m. the same day or on the following day, according to the affidavit.

Margarito and five other parks employees filed fair-employment complaints against the city in September, saying the investigations are part of a pattern of harassment and racial discrimination against them. Those complaints remain unresolved, and Margarito has threatened to follow up with lawsuits.

While the case has added drama and intrigue to council meetings--including secret memos and closed-door sessions--it also has brought back sore memories of corruption in a city that has worked hard to clean up its reputation.

The complex case began last year when Margarito launched a city investigation into alleged sexual harassment by a parks supervisor.

A city inquiry cleared the supervisor, who in turn made allegations about wrongdoing in the parks department, he said.

But the ostensible sexual harassment victim, Kathy Santiago, told The Times that the charges were bogus, involving fourth-hand comments that she never took seriously. Margarito insisted on making a case of the allegations as a way of attacking the supervisor, Matthew Withers, she said.

“Now, after all this comes out, I understand,” Santiago said. “They used me.”

Santiago told investigators that she believes the $525 check to her husband represented an attempt by Margarito to get her “on his side” in his effort to oust the supervisor through sexual-harassment charges, according to the warrant affidavit.

Tuesday’s affidavit also states that investigators have “evidence of a sensitive nature” that the sexual-harassment charge “was untrue, and orchestrated by Jess Margarito.”

The entire series of incidents remained unpublicized until September, when Margarito held a news conference outlining the allegations against him. The city quietly began its own administrative investigation a month later, and that inquiry spilled into the open when police began questioning parks employees. The employees, their relatives and Margarito’s supporters burst into the City Council chambers in November demanding answers from a tight-lipped council, which has made its decisions related to the case in closed session and filed numerous confidential memos.